The website “SkypeLookBook.com” has a number of TV solutions. One is the 3D Sony Blu-Ray Disc player, a $250 device that lets you do video calling from your TV. It also streams movies, music and photos from your computer or a service like Netflix.

If you don’t use all your minutes, you get a credit for the next month. If you go over your allotted minutes, you pay for what you use, without penalty. The Ting plan is $6 per month per device, plus the cost of minutes, and you don’t have to sign a contract. For example, 100 minutes adds $3 a month to the bill. Initially, Ting will work with Android phones, MiFi devices, and USB modems, but not the iPhone or Blackberry. You can keep your existing phone number. Sign up to be a beta tester or get notifications at Ting.com.

Normally, it costs extra to call friends’ cellphones or landlines through Skype, and you need a WiFi connection. Calls between Skype users are free. But again, you need a connection to the Internet.

Free WiFi for an hour will take place at all the major hubs, including New York JFK, San Francisco International and Chicago O’Hare.  View the list of airports here: http://blogs.skype.com/en/2011/12/skypeholidaywifi.html

In  three days, there’s a hangout to teach you about Google Plus.

Skype is the most well-known service for making cheap or free phone calls over the Internet. But Line2, a $10-$15 a month service from Line2.com, made us feel like big shots.

Line 2 adds a second line to any iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Android device. It lets you send calls to various departments of your company, even if you’re just a company of one. Your main line can be an 800 toll-free number, if you wish, and you can choose up to six automatic forwarding numbers. So when a call comes in it can also ring other phones.

Unlike Skype, you don’t have to be within range of a Wi-Fi signal to make cheap calls. It works both ways: you can make calls through a Wi-Fi or cell phone connection. If you’re an AT&T user who experiences a lot of dropped calls, you might prefer to use a Wi-Fi connection.

We tried making a Wi-Fi call on an iPod Touch, which normally doesn’t act as a phone. The call quality was excellent. Line2 has a lot of business features, but some of them, like making calls from your computer, require you to sign up for their $15 a month service. The basic service includes unlimited calling, unlimited texting, free transfer of your current number and call waiting, which means you can switch back and forth between two calls. You can also start a kind of conference call and add up to 20 people to the call.

There’s a seven-day free trial period for Line2 which includes a free app for iPhones, iPads, iPod Touch and Android phones and tablets.

A class in Missouri is using it for a 5^th grade weather project, comparing weather in five cities.  A class in Maine talked with former first lady Barbara Bush. A class in Yardley, PA, plays a Skype mystery game where they call a classroom at random and give clues to their whereabouts. Each class tries to guess where the other one is.  A class in Colorado Springs connected with a child’s dad in Iraq on Veteran’s Day. Still others are practicing foreign languages.

To use Skype’s free calling service, you need WiFi access, which really varies from country to country. To be sure of getting it, subscribe to a service like Boingo.com for around $8 a month (no contract required). You can get WiFi access at 200,000 hotspots worldwide.

If you’re in WiFi range, Skype lets you make free calls and not pay huge data roaming fees. Use it on a computer, tablet or smartphone. The sound quality is best if the other person is also using Skype, but you can also make calls to landlines. We’ve tried it both ways and using Skype to call a landline phone at the other end works pretty well.

The 2011 Ojo

The Ojo video phone looks like a traditional landline phone, except it has a screen so you can see the person you’re talking to.

The old Ojo from 2006

To make a video call with the Ojo, the other person has to have an Ojo too. Most people use Skype for video calls, but the Ojo is handy if you don’t want to sit in front of a computer. You can have it in a kitchen, bedroom or wherever.

When we first wrote about it almost four years ago, it was $349. Now it’s $150, plus $30 a month for unlimited calls to the U.S. and Canada.

We use the Vonage Internet phone service with a traditional desk-type phone, paying $18 a month (plus $11 in taxes and fees) for 500 minutes, and no video. Their World Plan is similarly priced to the Ojo at $26 a month, but you don’t get video. What you do get is unlimited calling to 60 countries. Their “pro” plan adds software you can use on your laptop, to make or receive calls from your home number in five countries.

So we took his advice and spent the $20. The phone dutifully arrived and it took only five minutes with TracFone customer support to have our old number and minutes transferred over. Unlike the $10 version, the new phone has most of the latest features: a camera, polyphonic ringtones, changeable wallpaper, games, web browser, speakerphone, auto redial, etc.

“Best of all,” said our reader, “it has Bluetooth. So if you’re cheap like me and don’t feel like paying for TracFone’s downloads, you can create your own graphics and ringtones on the PC, or download free ones from the Net. You can then upload them via a Bluetooth PC dongle, such as HP’s BT500 Bluetooth USB adapter.”

This is a very savvy reader. He continues: “The only fly in the ointment is that games and apps downloaded from the Net, other than the ones TracFone sells (and they have no apps yet), don’t work. Tried a workaround someone posted, but with no success.”

Unlike some other plans, phone minutes on the Tracfone are cumulative: The minutes and service days you add to your new TracFone are added to the ones you had left over. All your phone data is on the SIM card, which gives you the option to move your contacts to a new phone simply by transferring the card. (You can normally find a phone’s SIM card under or next to the battery). You can also use a Bluetooth receiver (they’re really tiny now) to transfer your contacts to a computer.

To find this cheap phone, go to Walmart.com and type “tracfone” into the search box. We also found this phone for sale at our local drugstore; so this is not going to be a rare item.